The Big Picture

The many dimensions of
poverty

Usually poverty is thought to be lack of income - for example, a
person is considered poor if his/her income is less than $1.25 a
day. However, poverty is much more than simply the lack of income.
Children living in poverty experience a lack of the material,
spiritual, and emotional resources they need to survive, develop
and thrive. A certain income does not necessarily mean that a
household has all it needs to provide what a child needs for a good
start in life. That is why it is important to focus on
multidimensional child poverty measures that look beyond income and
focus on whether children face deprivations to a range of their
basic rights such as health, education, information, nutrition,
shelter, water and sanitation.
When children are deprived of these rights in the first years of
their life, it can limit their potential for physical, intellectual
and emotional development. In turn, many children grow up without
the opportunity to be healthy and educated and to feel safe and
confident.Causes of Poverty
Poverty is a very complex issue that has many causes. One can think
about it at the individual or country level. At the individual
level, if someone does not have the skills or health or the
opportunity to secure a decent paying job that can guarantee their
basic needs, he/she will likely fall into poverty—or never get out
of it to begin with. A sad reality of poverty is that it can easily
be transmitted from one generation to the next. Poverty in
childhood is a root cause of poverty in adulthood: Impoverished
children often grow up to be impoverished parents who in turn bring
up their own children in poverty. Thus, poverty can breed poverty,
forming a vicious cycle. You can imagine then the consequences for
a country and its people. If the population is undernourished,
unhealthy, and has no education, it will be very hard for that
economy to grow.
At the country level, there are also many complex causes of
poverty. At one point all societies were poor. Through
technological innovations that favored faster, cheaper, more
efficient and bigger scale production of goods, as well as medical
innovations that improved lives, some countries have been able to
escape poverty. Yet, many are “trapped” in poverty due to many
reasons like conflicts and wars, bad geography, bad governance, and
not having access to the global market.Global study on child poverty and disparities
To understand how and where children are experiencing poverty,
UNICEF conducts a Global Study on Child Poverty and Disparities in
over 50 countries around the world. In many of these country
studies young people are asked to share their experiences growing
up poor. For example the Bhutan child poverty study shares with us
the experience of a 14 year old boy living in poverty: “When I was
about seven, I was in the village looking after the cattle. Those
were the most difficult parts of my life. I had to walk in the
forests without any slippers looking after the cattle. My father
always promised me that he would send me to school, but he never
did that. When he got a work … he even bought me school uniform to
get admitted in school, but by that time I was considered too old
for the school.”

Greis Osmani is a 16-year-old girl from Albania, and recently
took part in a One Minutes Jr. workshop in her country. She
created a thought-provoking video about youth culture, poverty,
and how we all fit into that. We asked her a couple of questions
about the video:
What is your vi...

It seems that 2015 will be a crucial year for the world. This
year two UN events will take place. The first one will be in
September in New York, where world leaders, after the "Millennium
Development Goals" (which were put in 2000), will put a new set
of goals, the "Sustainable Development...

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